


Jon Has a Cigarette

by SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Addiction, Discussions of Addiction, Gen, Minific, Pre-Canon, Smoking, i mean everything i write is just me venting but with this one you can actually tell, it's just me venting, jon in uni, venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27773521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse/pseuds/SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse
Summary: In which Jon has a cigarette and that's literally it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Jon Has a Cigarette

**Author's Note:**

> This was gonna be the start of a whole thing, and maybe it will be someday, but for now please just enjoy my fancy writing.

A cigarette feels like a car crash in its inevitability. Not that Jon’s ever been in a car crash. He’s just read about them, and they’re described like that, most of the time. Watching something bad happen helplessly and in slow motion, anticipating pain, etcetera. Right now Jon is watching himself buy a pack of Lucky Strikes in a shop a couple blocks from the main Cambridge campus. There’s a cinematic hesitation before he drops the crumpled bills into the cashier’s waiting palm, and then he grabs the pack and rips the plastic off it and gets a cigarette between his teeth before he’s even halfway out of the store. He’s not sure what part of the metaphor he’s at now. Careening down a hill, probably, and feeling his stomach drop as the little cardboard air freshener looped around the rearview mirror levitates in the suddenly reduced gravity. 

Jon’s been having an argument with himself, which lately has begun to feel more like a trap, although he isn’t sure who would have set it. He just thinks that maybe he quit smoking too early. That moderation might have been a better idea. That maybe the, the forbiddenness of cigarettes is making them more appealing than they would be otherwise, that he wouldn’t want them so strongly if he could just  _ have  _ one whenever he wanted one. Nevermind that he wants a cigarette all the damn time— He’s trying something new. He’s not giving in. He’s trying something new. 

The appropriate smoking distance away from the shop is helpfully marked by a crumpled pile of stomped-out filters, and Jon leans against a wall to light up. He wants something solid at his back. His hands are shaking — when did that start happening? — as he takes his lighter out of his pocket. It’s cheap green plastic, with a skull drawn on it in permanent ink. A loan-turned-gift from Georgie. She’d insisted, probably truthfully, that the skull wasn’t a morbid criticism of his smoking. Georgie has a strange and intense fascination with the macabre. And anyway, she smokes too. Not nearly as much as Jon, though. 

Jon flicks the lighter. The flame sputters, sustains. He’s gotten better at this since he started, a little callus on his thumb even, from where he’s scraped it against the wheel over and over waiting for class to end so he can go light up under a bathroom window. It’s not that he’s addicted to cigarettes, exactly. More to the clarity that comes with them. The sensation of the first inhale is always the same, after an hour or a week: like he’s pouring cool water into his skull. Like the tendrils of smoke are curling around the raw ends of his nerves and knitting them back together, making it so he can think again. He holds the cigarette up to his lips, closes his eyes, and inhales. 


End file.
